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| Roger Ebert |
By ROGER EBERT
ìAtonementî begins on joyous gossamer wings and descends into an abyss of tragedy and loss. Its opening scenes in an English country house between the wars are like a dream of elegance, and then a 13-year-old girl sees something she misunderstands, tells a lie, and destroys all possibility of happiness in three lives, including her own.
The opening act of the movie is like a breathless celebration of pure,
heedless joy, a demonstration of the theory that the pinnacle of human
happiness was reached by life in an English country house between the
wars. Of course, that was more true of those upstairs than downstairs.
We meet Cecilia Tallis (Keira Knightley), bold older daughter of an old
family, and Robbie Turner (James McAvoy), their housekeeperís promising
son, who is an Oxford graduate thanks to the generosity of Ceciliaís
father. Despite their difference in social class, they are powerfully
attracted to each other, and that leads to a charged erotic episode
next to a fountain on the house lawn.
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Oh, but the earlier scenes have floated effortlessly. Cecilia, as
played by Knightley with stunning style, speaks rapidly in that
upper-class accent that sounds like performance art. When I hear it, I
despair that we Americans will ever approach such style with our words
that march out like baked potatoes. She is so beautiful, so graceful,
so young, and Robbie may be working as a groundsman but is true blue,
intelligent and in love with her. They deserve each other.
But that is not to be, as you know if you have read the Ian McEwan
best-seller that the movie is inspired so faithfully by. McEwan, one of
the best novelists alive, allows the results of Brionyís vindictive
behavior to grow offstage until we meet the principals again in the
early days of the war. Robbie has enlisted and been posted to France.
Cecilia is a nurse in London, and so is Briony, now 18, trying to atone
for what she realizes was a tragic error. There is a meeting of the
three, only one, in London, that demonstrates to them what they have
all lost.
The film cuts back and forth between the war in France and the bombing
of London, and there is a single (apparently) unbroken shot of the
beach at Dunkirk that is one of the great takes in film history,
achieved or augmented with CGI though it is. (If it looks real, in
movie logic it is real.) After an agonizing trek from behind enemy
lines, Robbie is among the troops waiting to be evacuated in a Dunkirk
much more of a bloody mess than legend would have us believe. In the
months before, the lovers have written, promising each other the
happiness they have earned.
Each period and scene in the movie is compelling on its own terms, and
then compelling on a deeper level as a playing-out of the destiny that
was sealed beside the fountain on that perfect summerís day. It is only
at the end of the film, when Briony, now an aged novelist played by
Vanessa Redgrave, reveals facts about the story, that we realize how
thoroughly, how stupidly, she has continued for a lifetime to betray
Cecilia, Robbie and herself.
The structure of the McEwan novel and this film directed by Joe Wright
is relentless. How many films have we seen that fascinate in every
moment and then, in the last moments, pose a question about all that
has gone before, one that forces us to think deeply about what betrayal
and atonement might really entail?
Wright, who also directed Knightley in his first film, ìPride and
Prejudice,î shows a mastery of nuance and epic, sometimes in adjacent
scenes. In the McEwan novel he has a story that can hardly fail him,
and an ending that blindsides us with its implications. This is one of
the yearís best films, a certain best picture nominee.
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Roger Ebert, a Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic, is a syndicated columnist based at the Chicago Sun-Times.
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